and although I was burning, you're the only light
by Delenn
Summary: River Song always knew she would die in a space suit. As a point of fact, she had refused to wear one for over two centuries. Since she had last been shoved into one. But this time she'd donned it willingly. Telling herself she was too old to be so superstitious. Besides, it was a Health and Safety issue, really. It's not like it was the same suit.


**Written: 6/16/13-6/24/13**

**Title from: _Only if for a Night_ by Florence and the Machine.**

**Rated: General**

**A/N: Really angsty. Sorry all.**

and although I was burning, you're the only light

River Song always knew she would die in a space suit. As a point of fact, she had refused to wear one for over two centuries. Since she had last been shoved into one. But this time she'd donned it willingly. Telling herself she was too old to be so superstitious. Besides, it was a Health and Safety issue, really. It's not like it was the same suit.

She stays remarkably collected throughout it all. Reminding herself that _there's always a way out_ when the rising panic just at being in the bloody suit threatens to choke her until she wants to rip it off. She knows the Doctor won't let her. Not this young. He's trying to protect her, bless, but he doesn't understand. Even though she's practically told him. The biggest spoiler she has, and he's known all along.

River feels like she should laugh at the irony but instead she finds herself wanting to cry. Is this why he'd fought so hard, when he was young? Was he really that afraid of her? She can see it in his eyes. But when he looks at her, he's still mostly curious. Still eyeing her like a puzzle he can take apart to figure out when he thinks she's not looking.

She wishes her Doctor were here. Oh he always tries to protect her too, bless. But at least he'd understand. He'd know why she needs to take this bloody suit off, Vashta Nerada be damned. She'd rather run through the Library barefoot, with him at her side, one of her hands holding his and the other her squareness gun.

But her Doctor is not here. This Doctor doesn't even know her. And River shutters the rising tide of panic - _what's next? Is this it? Will I truly never see him again? -_ so that he cannot see, and helps him save all these people. Donna. Her crew. The 4,022 individuals that are trapped her. And, oh, Charlotte. She wonders if she should have signed the contract. Heard the story. If she still would've come - _of course she would -_ or if she would have realized that some stories don't get a happy ending.

She's still telling herself _there's always a way out_ even as she realizes there isn't. Even as she runs through scenarios and they all end with a mind being donated to the Library to save them all. She's still telling herself that, lying, because it's honestly been one thing after the next and between the suit and him not knowing her and _what now_ she really just cannot fathom...

When she meets his eyes, she knows. The both know, really. Oh, there's a way out, and of course he's going to take it. He is going to save everyone, no matter the cost. And she absolutely refuses to watch him die _one more time_. And then, with a clarity that sends her hearts plummeting down her chest and adrenaline pounding through her veins in its stead, she understands.

Understands the way he looked at her at Asgard. At the crash of the Byzantium.

She is knocking him out before she really even has a chance to think about it. Whipping out her handcuffs and remembering the way he'd teased her about them at Alfava Metraxis. The way the smile hadn't reached his eyes. _Oh, sweetie_.

In the end, he had the biggest spoiler after all.

River finds a strange sort of calm as she settles in the chair and finishes the wiring. She'd always thought the first time he met her would kill her. She hadn't meant it quite so literally at the time, but she supposes it is all the same in the end. And, of course, she should've known when she put on a space suit. One last death for an impossible astronaut. Hers, just as she'd always feared.

She wishes she could pull the bloody thing off - she's dying now, it hardly matters. But there isn't any time. He's already stirring and the wiring needs correcting and there isn't enough time. Never enough time.

She remembers the way he's always touched her - like there wasn't enough time. Clutching her to him as though he never wanted to let her go but he could feel her slipping through his fingers like the sands of an hourglass. She can see it in his eyes now. As if he could somehow just reach far enough to grab her and cradle her to him.

When the tears start tracking down her cheeks, she finds herself drifting back to the last time she saw him - the real him. Her Doctor. A last shining moment of linearity among increasingly younger versions of himself. A perfect moment where they were both, finally, old enough that spoilers were just memories they could share.

She finds herself crying, reassuring a younger him, still so freshly wounded from losses recent and yet to come. A him that is possibly even more terrified of endings. River remembers the way he held her and cried at Darillium. She had thought it was about Trenzalore, or about her parents, or the bare handful of other times he had sought comfort in her arms. But she can't tell him that. So she tells him about the Singing Towers, and bites back other spoilers because it still matters, especially now.

She wants to kiss him. One last time. To say goodbye. She remembers how he had kissed her against the Singing Towers. It hadn't tasted like goodbye then. So she refuses to say it now. With them, it's never goodbye. Never over. Never enough running. She smiles through the tears and tells him she loves him in the only way she can - by promising that there are no endings for them.

When she pushes the wires together it's all a blast of bright light, so similar to regenerating, and so fitting that she's giving her last life for him all over again. She cradles his face in her mind, on their wedding - their first wedding, their hundredth wedding - as the light consumes her. She lets her eyes close, giving in to the darkness.

And then she's blinking in the sunlight. Digital grass under her toes and no space suit in sight. And River doesn't know whether to laugh or cry - she wonders if she'll ever be able to decide which best expresses the feeling lodged between her hearts. That man absolutely does not know when to give up.

As she runs to greet her fallen expedition, River finds herself shaking her head in wonder. The biggest spoiler.

Perhaps they never really end at all.


End file.
